The Midsummer Station
'''The Midsummer Station '''is the fourth 'studio album by American electronica project Owl City, released on August 17, 2012.' Writing and development After Owl City's previous album, All Things Bright and Beautiful (2011) sold only 143,000 copies in the United States, Adam Young began working on demo tracks for The Midsummer Station in January 2012.[2] Unlike his previous albums, Young worked with different songwriters and producers for the first time, including Stargate and Emily Wright.[2] However, Young again collaborated with Matthew Thiessen for his third album in a row along withOcean Eyes and All Things Bright and Beautiful. Young was initially scared of the thought of collaborating with others, "I've never worked with anybody before. I've done everything myself except for mastering. It's a big job for one guy, especially a perfectionist, so I knew I wanted to try to experiment with other people."[2] The song "Dementia", which features Blink 182 singer Mark Hoppus, was mixed by Chris Lord-Alge.[3] On May 15, 2012, Young released the Shooting Star extended play, which consisted of four songs that would be featured on The Midsummer Station. Many criticized Shooting Star, saying it was very different from Young's previous works. On his blog, Young defended his choice for the new sound of the extended play and the album, stating that he believes "it's a bummer for an artist of any kind to hear, 'Yeah it's great but it's a lot like your previous work.' (...) Creativity is all about pushing boundaries and pressing onward".[4] In an interview with PureVolume, Young stated that the tracks on this record are much darker, with more influence of his own dreams, nightmares and self-reflection.[5] The album was originally planned to have a release date of August 14, 2012 worldwide, apart from the United Kingdom where it would be released on September 17, 2012.[6] On June 21, 2012, it was announced that the worldwide release date would be pushed back to August 21, 2012.[7] On July 12, 2012, Young announced via Twitter that the UK release date would be brought forward to August 20, 2012. [8] The album was released on August 17 in other countries including Australia.[9] Singles The EP's title track, "Shooting Star", was intended to be the lead single from The Midsummer Station, but the Carly Rae Jepsen-collaboration "Good Time" was chosen instead, due to the success of Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe".[2] "Good Time" was released on June 26, 2012,[10] and has peaked at No. 8 on the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Hot_100 Billboard Hot 100].[11] On May 13, 2013, Owl City streamed the music video for the third single, "Metropolis" on Just Jared.[citation needed] Reception Critical reception The album received mixed reviews from music critics upon its release. As of September 9, 2012 the album received an average score of 55 based on 9 reviews at Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, which indicates "mixed or average reviews".[12] Commercial performance The Midsummer Station debuted at number seven on the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_200 Billboard 200] in the United States, with first-week sales of 30,000 copies. Digital downloads accounted for 72 percent of the album's first-week total.[18] In the United Kingdom the album debuted at number 34, selling 3,281 copies in its first week.[19] Track listing